Director Nagisa Oshima's film uses the "pink" genre to mask an allegory about the materialism of post-war Japan (the original title translates as "Indulgence"). Katsuo Nakamura stars as a man blackmailed by a thief, who makes him hold on to some stolen loot while the thief serves a jail sentence. Nakamura is led into temptation by all that money sitting around, so he decides to spend it on wild partying and sex before killing himself to avoid retribution. Like the films of Paul Morrissey, Etsuraku simultaneously exploits its subject matter and condemns it, to peculiar effect.